LAMONT-LIEBERMAN POSTGAME.

Now, of course, the world faces the question of whether Lieberman pursues and independent bid. Tragically, this seems caught up in the meta-analysis of the expectations factor. Relative to, say, six weeks ago, Lamont far exceeded expectations -- he won, which looked very unlikely quite recently. But relative to expectations set about a week ago, he underperformed; winning narrowly when some polls had shown him winning big. Over the past couple of days, Lamont supporters tried to lower expectations, but one of the difficulties with having a campaign do so much communication unofficially through high-profile blogs is that your strategic gambits get very transparent.

For the broader future of progressive politics, I think a narrow Lamont win is a good result, for roughly Chait-ian reasons -- it establishes that there are some limits to the behavior Democrats can expect their constituents to put up with but that politicians still retain fairly broad latitude to chart their own course.